


For Good Health and Opportunity

by vicariously kingly (pelted)



Series: In Homage to Theoxenia [1]
Category: Final Fantasy XIV
Genre: 5+1 Things, Gen, Pre-Slash
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-01
Updated: 2020-08-01
Packaged: 2021-03-05 23:54:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 14,313
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25653988
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pelted/pseuds/vicariously%20kingly
Summary: Five times Emet-Selch sought out the Crystal Exarch, and one time the Crystal Exarch found him first.
Series: In Homage to Theoxenia [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1859977
Comments: 4
Kudos: 51





	For Good Health and Opportunity

**Author's Note:**

> **!! FIC CONTAINS EXTENSIVE SHADOWBRINGERS SPOILERS !!**
> 
> This fic is canon-compliant and set pre-Shadowbringers, but with a very loose understanding of the word "canon."
> 
> Major thank you to [Jackaloping](https://archiveofourown.org/users/jackaloping), beta extraordinaire! Please note that while this fic is gen & stand-alone, it's ultimately a set-up for the rest of the series, which is focused on Emet/G'raha. Hope you too enjoy this self-indulgent fun!!

**I.**

An Ascian entered the Ocular. 

Rather, an Ascian walked into the Ocular. More accurately and less charitably, an Ascian shuffled into the Ocular. Shuffled, back hunched, deep purple robe in burnished silver swirls swaying slow around its long legs. Its face shifted left to right, and right to left, its mask a disconcerting red crescent over a deeply etched scowl. 

G’raha Tia watched this Ascian enter his Ocular from the security of his reading room, and felt— surprised. Baffled, even. For all two pages he recalled from a Scion's threadbare and two-centuries-old adventuring journal regarding the mysterious figures, he never thought one would appear so close or so obviously. They were wont to appear and disappear at will, he had read; they were likely if not assured to be the architects behind the Source’s Calamities; and though they frequently took a shape familiar to the sentient races, they were anything but trustworthy.

Perhaps it didn't realize he registered every aether-filled creature that stepped foot over the Tower's threshold, his awareness of the energies within the Tower a faint hum under his skin and the internal security screens a finger-tap away. Perhaps it was convinced it was alone and unobserved?

Perhaps it did not know anything, as it trudged the Ocular's outer bounds like a witless dodo freed from its pen for the first time.

"Crystal man for a crystal tower," the creature called, stopping at the Ocular's side door and staring straight at the ceiling, "is rather on the nose. But, never mind the poor taste in descriptors. Is this where I knock? Do tell."

It directed its call ten degrees to the left of G'raha's actual and hitherto invisible vantage point. The proximity failed to appear as a coincidence.

The Ascian had not used the front entrance. Tents and tarps crowded the entrance as travelers sought refuge from the Light in the Tower's shade. The crowd grew every day, but those closest to his doors knew each other well. Due to his coincidental timing with the Flood's abatement --years after the event, but just as the worst was left behind-- they had decided the Tower and he were a large part reason they survived the Light; and so they guarded his doorstep with all the jealousy of thieves with their treasure.

Which, on reflection, was an uncharitable thought.

The real point was: he kept an eye on the Tower's makeshift town. It didn't seem fair to leave them to their own devices when they so desperately believed the Tower would protect them.

He would have known if an Ascian walked its dirt and dust paths.

At least, he should have.

"Hello?" The Ascian's voice echoed across the Ocular's gleaming tile. "I thought this place looked less dusty than when I last saw it, but it appears I was mistaken."

A chill shivered down G'raha's spine. A squirming, fearful weight settled in his stomach. To deal with Ascians was to deal with death, wrote a Scion two centuries prior to G'raha's readings. Considering the Ascians’ persistence across even the Source's Calamities, it seemed unlikely the warning had changed with time.

He took two crystalline cubes and his staff as he left his reading room. Hid the first two in his robes. Gripped with the hand that wouldn't betray his anxiety, the other.

The Ascian had moved to the Ocular's main screen when G'raha arrived. It was saying, "Must I always pull the rats from their hovels," with the idle consideration of a cat watching such vermin play.

"Most knock at the _front_ door," G'raha said as he opened and stepped through the side door. He kept an eye on the Ascian as he shut the door behind him as slowly as he dared. 

The Ascian turned toward him, directing its unsettling red mask's gaze in his direction.

It said, its shoulders raising and falling in a minuscule shrug, "But it's such a big Tower. I wasn't sure if you would be able to hear so far." And then, before G'raha could reply, "You have also become quite the celebrity. A guard stopped any who attempted to approach the entrance and asked their business before allowing them to grace you with their presence. It all seemed like quite the hassle."

Guard? Yes, those he had known the longest had taken to speaking of matters most frequently immediately outside the entrance, but they were hardly a _guard._

He supposed they did carry weapons at all times. But there were often bandits and sin eaters to watch for, so that made sense. They also followed him through the camp on the rare occasions he mustered the courage to leave the Tower. They intervened when a traveler asked him one too many questions about his plans for a township, but that was because they were of the friendliest sort. Similar to the Ironworks members who _first_ woke him, filled with passion and compassion in equal measure for the sick and tired.

But then-- _celebrity_ , it said.

G'raha cleared his throat and tapped his staff on the ground, hard. Straightened his back, stiffened his shoulders. Pretended he knew what he was doing.

"What do you want, Ascian?" 

The Ascian waved its hand, its mask disappearing behind its hood's lining as it turned partially back to the mirror. G'raha's eyes caught on the sharp white gleam of two dark-metal talons sticking out from its glove-tips.

"Your knowledge of my kin is a pleasant surprise, crystal keeper. Your willingness to discuss rather than yell, even more so. All the same, please, do not worry so. I am simply here to see what has stopped the First's progress. Two relics of bygone eras, out of time and space... And yet its sibling sits yet on the Source. How peculiar."

_The First._

Of course an Ascian would know of the Shards. There would be no appreciating what interested an Ascian with the First in particular

G'raha's brow furrowed. "What progress do you speak of?"

"Hm? Ah. Do not worry your little head about it." 

A mumble nearly missed, as the Ascian distracted itself with the Ocular's main screen. For all it had begged for G’raha’s attention, now that he had arrived, it appeared uninterested. 

The anxiety of having an Ascian in his Tower bubbled into nervous frustration. Such emotion spiked as it reached its claws toward the main screen, prompting G'raha to move quickly to intercept.

"Leave that be!"

To G'raha's shock, the Ascian did. It retracted its hand, turning again toward G'raha as he rushed himself to its side. G'raha brandished his staff as if a sword to keep it a reasonable distance from the screen. 

There was no telling what face existed behind the mask, but by the twist to the creature's mouth, G'raha saw amusement. 

"Are you afraid I will spy on the weeds growing outside?" It asked him, its hand dropping and its mouth newly sneering. "This screen can do little else. Well, if privacy is your concern, I will leave you to it. As I said, I am simply here to see what changed."

It occurred to G'raha that letting the Ascian go without any clarification was, in all likelihood, a big mistake. But at the same time was the need for the creature to be gone from his Tower, lest it upset all _they_ had worked and hoped for. Lest it decide it has indeed observed what it wanted, and decided to strike down those who stood witness to its presence. Lest, following such a murder, the Tower rejected its new home on the First and returned to the Source, leaving all that sought shelter in its shade to wither and condemning the hundreds of thousands to death on shard and Source both. 

With such thoughts overtaking the need for else, he busied himself so much with looking for the Ascian's inevitable attack-- _for where goes an Ascian, soon follows death_ \- he did not think he needed to be the one to reach out. 

"And so I have seen," the Ascian muttered, continuing the conversation with himself, much to G'raha's discomfort. "This will be a very tiresome clean-up, indeed."

Just as G'raha tapped his fingers to the cube with _demi_ woven into its runes, ready to call on the crushing gravity spell, the Ascian's sneer dropped into neutrality and it stepped back. All at once, purple cut through the empty space behind it. Black swirled forward, around and over the Ascian. 

Suddenly as it had arrived, it departed.

 _Ascians were wont to appear and disappear at will._ G'raha stood a few moments longer, staff yet extended and eyes blinking rapidly, as if between one and the next the creature would return.

That afternoon, it did not.

 _How peculiar_ , G'raha thought. _I best record this._

Seeing an Ascian seemed like a bad omen. Living to tell the tale had to be a worse one.

**II.**

“That is no simple sibling. They are one in the same. How _did_ you manage that.”

“Are you speaking to m--?” G’raha stopped as he turned, hands freezing in alarm where they had been re-adjusting his overheated ears under his light-absorbing, black hood as he spied who spoke such nonsense at him, “... Ascian.”

“The Tower,” the Ascian said, hand a sharp, irritated gesture toward the looming structure visible over the hopeful stakes, poles and to-be walls of a future smithery, “Syrcus Tower, as I imagine we both once knew it to be called. I can’t think of where else you discovered an outfit of obvious Allagan make.”

Forcibly moving his hands to his sides with a discrete tug to make sure his hood sat securely over his eyes, G’raha breathed past the initial spike of fear. He had separated himself from the bustle of construction to find a moment of quiet and recoup his wits. As the construction truly got underway, less and less did he find himself able to pass time squirreled away in his reading room. A number of the townsfolk thought him a natural mediator for disputes regarding what building to put where, which materials to allocate to whom, and which projects to prioritize-- all of which the more scholarly of the town insisted he document and administer, as the town’s makeshift mayor. 

Mayoring, it turned out, took an alarming amount of time. 

The people hadn’t taken to calling him _mayor_ , though. They wanted something more grandiose. Lord, or liege, or King, or a host of other titles he readily protested. 

The most recent trend had been Exarch. That couldn’t possibly stick.

He turned over what the Ascian said.

And blinked.

And blurted, brow furrowed and head tilted, “That would be because it is the same Tower,” but thought, _Then you do travel between the worlds so easily. Tell me of the Source. Lend me that power, and let my wait be over._

What stayed his tongue was the knowledge that one did not deal with Ascians. After one trespassed so easily into his Ocular, he had delved deeper into the subject. At least, he had delved into what little there was to delve deeper into. The Black Wolf’s accounts had been the most complete, detailing something of a hierarchy based around the most to least ancient Ascian, and something else too of their known powers and weaknesses. Ultimately, the accounts were dismal for what G’raha could do to repel or withstand the monsters, requiring powers and techniques beyond even the Tower’s capabilities.

All the same, he’d set up what barriers and warding he could around the town and within the Tower. Successful, he’d dared to hope-- for he had rushed to place the protections, and found no Ascian on his doorstep three years hence. As it had originally appeared within a year of G’raha’s initial arrival on the First, he thought the odds of the securities working to be at least _decent._

But then, here it was again. In a half-finished alley, the walls on either side of them casting meager shade from the unrelenting Light above. 

Its mouth twisted into a disapproving frown. It crossed its arms.

“Allow me to explain… more precisely.” It sounded like a Sharlayan scholar when given an obtuse answer to a simple question. G’raha briefly wondered if he should not, in fact, be thinking of it as an _it,_ as its cadence certainly matched the stuffy old elders’ annoyed drawl. “This exact Tower exists in two places at the same time. Not as a duplicate or replica, but as it is. How is that.”

Somewhat uncertain, G’raha allowed silence to stretch between them. 

The Ascian did not move.

The Ascian appeared to be the same one G’raha had met three years prior. Brief though the meeting was,the robed figure was difficult to forget. The red half-mask matched the one he’d poorly doodled in the margin of his records of the encounter, at least.

As the pause continued to an unbearable tenth second, G’raha finally slid one foot back and asked, “Was that a question?” 

He received a scoff. The Ascian dropped its arms to the side, and radiated annoyance.

A mutual feeling stirred in G’raha. The tip of his tail twitched once, twice. He forced it still.

Just as he took a breath to continue, his annoyance as always giving rise to unearned courage, the Ascian spoke.

“You know me for what I am. You should know, too, that I had a hand in creating the Syrcus Tower. Yet here it is, in a place beyond its place or power. As you are not of this Shard either, I ask only how you managed such a feat. If it was simply you, or if others were involved.”

Through voice alone, G’raha had the impression the other was trying very hard to play nice. 

He wasn’t encouraged to do the same.

Several years he had been on the First, and rare indeed was even the thought of discussing the Tower’s origins. The heroic determination, the hope-drenched desperation, the bloody sacrifices-- G’raha had witnessed the hearts poured and emptied into the Tower’s success, and had yet to find the words to capture its magnitude. He himself had helped, yes. He’d hoped alongside them. But he had only been awakened and walked the destroyed world the Source had become for a scant ten months before they’d sent him where he needed to be. 

The First had proven to fare no better than the Calamity-torn Source. The same desperate hope existed in the growing town around the Tower as it had in those of Garlond Ironworks. 

A century to wait, was…

Unexpected.

“Such a feat, as you say, was hardly a one-person job.” A murmur. The subject threatened to choke him if he tried to give it voice; in front of an Ascian, it turned his stomach to pure acid. His mind fled from it, lest it overwhelm him and confine him once more to his room until he could regroup. Better in the Tower’s dark, where the townsfolk could not see their makeshift mayor as small and alone as he knew himself to be. “Before I answer any questions, I must ask as well: do you always appear without introduction and make demands of those around you?”

The Ascian’s frown leveled out. 

After a moment: “Where are my manners. If ‘Ascian’ grows tiring, you may call me Emet-Selch. And I may call you…?”

G’raha said nothing.

“... The Exarch?”

After a moment of his own, G’raha inclined his head forward.

“For now,” he said, warily amused at his own situation. An Ascian calling him an Exarch. _Ha._ “Last month, I was called the Shepherd.”

“Dreadful,” the Ascian muttered, “but fitting for the flock quartered here.”

G’raha tried -- unsuccessfully, he feared -- to school his face into neutrality. “I wouldn’t agree.”

The Ascian waved a hand dismissively, clearly unimpressed. Then, though it-- hold a moment. _He_ , not it? It felt more and more like a _he_ with every gesture. But then, the Black Wolf’s accounts warned its readers from attempting to normalize any Ascian. In any case, although Emet-Selch had been fixated on the Tower, he turned himself toward the scaffolding which supported one side of their far-too-cozy alleyway.

“If the city is to compare to the Tower’s craftsmanship, it will need a grander showing than ten layers of rough rock and repurposed clay. You’ll find better quality stone from Amh Araeng. ”

G’raha wondered if his ears, which had a perpetual itch under his hood, had in fact fallen off.

Confused by the apparent non-sequitur, he asked, “Excuse me?”

The Ascian slanted a look his way. Although he couldn’t see the eyes behind the mask, he imagined they rolled. “Establish a trading route for the stone. Secure any caravans from sin eaters and bandits. You’ll find the smooth fossils in the lakebed fetch a fine price across the desert. A secure trading route will prove even more profitable in the long run.”

G’raha frowned. His tail twitched again. He once more forced it still. 

Out of all the things he could say to such unsolicited and baffling advice, what he chose was: “Most here struggle to venture into Lakeland, let alone as far as Mord Souq.”

“You don’t need _most_ , only those willing to take up the arms and swallow the risk. Surely there are those too restless for construction and farm work.”

There were.

G’raha did not want to concede such.

Also, there existed another problem. “The guard is currently overwhelmed with securing _this_ perimeter from sin eaters, and that is with the help of the shields in town.” The shields he set up, from Garlond Ironworks’ blueprints and the Tower’s power.

Emet-Selch shrugged one shoulder. “Find weary bandits who would trade their pillaging for security. Or, disheartened soldiers of Eulmore who do not mind the idea of desertion from a war against Light monsters that they have no chance of winning. The options are many.”

And each came with a cost. Eulmore was not a city-state to be trifled with. Its armies remained the only hope for eradicating the sin eaters, although as the years dragged on, G’raha saw how it was fated to dwindle. By then, the scholars and white mages should have puzzled out an answer to the sin eater’s contagious transformation. It seemed nonetheless prudent to plan for the possibility that they wouldn’t.

“Stone aside.” G’raha’s gaze shifted back to Emet-Selch. The Ascian’s shoulders had slumped, and his tone drifted into one unaffected, if not outright lazy. “Tell your architects to consider buttresses for the taller structures. Domes, too, for roofs, and more buildings open to the cooler winds from the lake. For obvious reasons, temperature regulation will become a necessity as the star continues to adjust to never-ending daylight.”

Again, a non-sequitur. 

And one so… harmless.

The Black Wolf hadn’t made mention of Ascians involved in the nitty-gritty of city planning. The blithe attitude toward sending caravans to their assured deaths fit better. 

G’raha tilted his head, trying to work out what possible advantage there could be in providing architectural advice. Save the advice being bad and the rooves collapsing on everyone, he couldn’t see one. To make him think Emet-Selch more peculiar than dangerous, perhaps; but that trap, G’raha had no fear of falling into. Emet-Selch’s very robes, with its armored shoulders, talon gloves and blood-red mask, served as warning enough.

So he simply asked, as he had nothing else he could say to that: “Consider buttre... what?”

Emet-Selch again waved a hand, as dismissive as ever. G’raha began to fear disregard was a trait by which he defined himself. 

“The architects will know. Mind, if they don’t, you’ll need to search for new ones.” And with that so established, the Ascian took a step back and gave G’raha a short, mocking nod. “Best of luck, Exarch. Do try to make some progress before the next time we meet.”

Between one blink and the next, he departed into the same swirl of black aether he had used on their first meeting. It was likely he arrived on the First in the same manner, though where and when were certainly mysteries. 

In his absence, G’raha let out a breath he hadn’t known he’d been holding. He felt far less rattled but far more confused than their first run-in. His first conscious thought to follow the departure was an oddly exasperated, _Did there have to be a next time?_

Unless Emet-Selch turned out to be one of the untested Ascians, as the Black Wolf described the youngest of the creatures, there most likely did.

When there was, would the Ascian think to follow up on whether the poorly-delivered advice was considered?

Was the advice true or misleading? 

_Well,_ G’raha thought, _the architects should be able to say how good that advice is._

As it turned out, they could, and they did. 

It was, infuriatingly, decent advice.

**III.**

The Ascian took to haunting the Crystarium’s streets. 

Rather, the Ascian skulked the edges of gatherings; lurked in shadows and open streets both; and, on one memorable occasion, could be discovered asleep in Lakeland’s sun-resistant trees, seemingly invisible to patrols, wildlife, and sin eaters alike. _More accurately_ , G’raha feared the Ascian had taken to dogging his footsteps specifically, as even when others didn’t notice him asleep in a tree, G’raha’s eyes were sure to find him.

The questions about the Tower’s workings petered off, although they seemed to rise just as G’raha thought Emet-Selch had lost interest. The tenacity was almost impressive, as G’raha learned _losing interest_ was in fact Emet-Selch’s favorite hobby. He wandered away at the drop of a hat, sometimes mid-conversation, citing boredom or tedium or annoyance with G’raha’s responses. The habit to cut off discussions occurred even though Emet-Selch himself initiated the conversations, and persisted regardless of G’raha’s own investment in whatever inane subject graced the Ascian’s mind.

If it was all in an effort to learn the Tower’s secrets, it was certainly a long-term project. The more Emet-Selch asked, the tighter G’raha held his knowledge to his chest.

In truth, for how naturally manipulation of the Tower’s mechanisms came to him, he understood little about its peculiarities. To be sure, he was unable to describe how he knew what was needed to wake the Tower’s power. It came to him instinctually, simply reacting to his royally gifted blood. It had been a fact that drove Biggs III and others at Garlond Ironworks to drinking, as he had full access, without being able to hand any sort of key to anyone else. They had finally accepted the blood-bound controls, although the source and how it knew _he_ had Allagan blood when he hadn’t done anything to calibrate it continually eluded them.

G’raha had believed an Ascian, equally mysterious as they were, would be above whatever troubles they had with understanding the Tower.

By their first meeting, Emet-Selch disproved that belief. By their sixth, G’raha found himself reluctantly re-assessing his assumptions about Ascians’ superiority.

What he didn’t know was whether Emet-Selch was the odd Ascian out, or if the Black Wolf and the Scions’ understandable hatred of their kind warped the accounts. 

Everything G’raha read told him to expect trouble. Yet, every time Emet-Selch graced-- a term used increasingly loosely-- him with his presence, he brought nothing but the trouble of a trifling inconvenience. Short and seemingly random though the visits were, G’raha remembered them well: for all Emet-Selch did nothing to directly threaten him or his, the mere appearance always managed to linger in his memory.

Sometimes, G’raha tried to eke out answers for what Ascians were really like in the flesh. As it turned out, Emet-Selch was just as good at providing evasive answers as G’raha was. Once, he claimed he would answer plainly when G’raha paid him the same favor, but there was no telling if that had been a proposed promise or a statement of idle frustration with G’raha’s silence.

The eleventh time G’raha spotted Emet-Selch in the Crystarium was fifteen years and two months after G’raha’s arrival on the First. The Crystarium had been in his mind’s eyes as a never-ending construction project plagued by sin eaters and desperate travelers. Yet, between one blink and the next, G’raha found himself situated as the leader of peoples determined to make the place a _home_. Children played in the streets. An open-air tavern sold ale by the barrel-full, distilled in the tender’s red-stone basement. The guards were no longer protective bands of people sleeping outside of the Tower’s entrance, but a united group with protocols and patrols and recruitment schemes. 

G’raha had overseen the development of each and every one of them, and yet could not see himself as a part of them. With the hard work of construction largely passed, he was not frequently needed outside of the Tower. When he did venture out, the people tended to stare or, more often, stop him every five steps for a conversation about this-or-that. And so he kept again to his reading room, reviewing over and over what would need to be done once the time was right and _she_ could be called to the First. Occasionally he ventured into Lakeland, if only to remind himself of the state of things. Even less frequently he joined a caravan to Amh Araeng or Eulmore, though he found the journey to exhaust him quicker than anything else for reasons he recognized but refused yet to test the boundaries of. He knew he’d need to some day. In eighty-four years and ten months, possibly.

Who knew the years could pass so slowly.

He did miss the open air, though not as much as he missed the night. Perhaps he could turn the Tower’s roof into something worth reading in.

“Where do you go when you aren’t here, Ascian?”

Emet-Selch’s nattering about his distaste for freezing weathers halted. The cold had been all he spoke of after he’d shuffled himself into the Ocular and sat himself on the bottom stairs leading to the main screen. G’raha, ever vigilant, had placed himself between the Ascian and the screen, hood up and staff brandished as a warning. Mercifully, he made no mention of the fact that Emet-Selch could easily access the screen when G’raha wasn’t there, or that even while G’raha was, that it should have been little trouble for an Ascian to brush him away. Instead of dealing with a threat, however, G’raha found himself leaning heavier on his staff as Emet-Selch’s tireless droll threatened to put him to sleep.

Same as it had been the last eleven times they met, Emet-Selch made himself appear harmless.

G’raha told himself not to be fooled by it, but he grew weary of vigilance for a threat that refused to materialize.

He grew weary of most things, these days.

“Here and there. The top of the highest mountains, the base of the deepest sea. The moon, when I must.” Emet-Selch angled his head to peer side-eyed at G’raha. His expression, mask excluded, was entirely blank.

G’raha breathed out a tight sigh that betrayed his annoyance more than he wished. At least he’d managed to get his tail and ears under control over the years. He’d found his robes were far less mysterious and imposing when the cloth kept twitching (and, more importantly, no rumors about a red-eyed mage in the Tower circulated, unlike when he had openly walked with Garlond Ironworks).

“The moon has snow?”

The left corner of Emet-Selch’s mouth twitched upwards before smoothing out. “Oh, no. But it is still quite cold.”

Was that right. “Then, am I better company than moon rocks?”

“Occasionally, yes.”

“I imagine they are better listeners. Perhaps you could return to them.”

“Sound doesn’t travel as well on the moon.” He said this as if G’raha should have known. He often did that, and most often about topics G’raha would have no way of knowing. It was, at least, a consistent trait. “It isn’t a perfect vacuum, but it’s close. I would have to speak much louder for a rock to capture what I said.”

G’raha bit down on a huff. He channeled his annoyance into shifting his staff from his left hand to his right. The crystal that had grown past his wrist _clinked_ against the metal. “Is that why you insist on visiting me?”

Emet-Selch turned his head away. He tapped one taloned finger against his knee in an idle pattern. 

“I had already been in the area for a,” _hm_ , “negotiation.” That shouldn’t have been surprising considering his pension for sleeping in Lakeland trees, but the explicit mention snagged G’raha’s attention. Seemingly unaware of G’raha’s abrupt shift to alert, Emet-Selch continued, “I thought it prudent to stop in before I departed. Considering the work that lies ahead, it may be some time before I return.” A pause. “I don’t suppose you would be amicable to discussing your time-traveling before I go.”

Distracted as he was by what _negotiation_ could possibly entail, he barely registered the errant question about the Tower. Just as well, as Emet-Selch’s tone betrayed that he expected nothing to come of the inquiry.

G’raha was not so isolated as to think eleven visits in fifteen years was _often_. For a possibly immortal Ascian, perhaps time moved differently. Something to note in his growing records of their interactions, to be sure.

Moreover, “What work is there to be done on the moon? It seems fine from where I stand.” 

His voice sounded off-kilter to his own muffled ears. _Negotiations._ Clearly not with him, or he would not have been falling asleep to Emet-Selch complaining about the cold. With who, then? Was it someone in the Crystarium? Was it anyone who would discuss it openly? Would he be able to find them if he tried?

At his weak quip, Emet-Selch snorted. “Supplemented by Allag’s heirloom though you are, your perception of the world is hardly complete.”

A dark note crept his tone. One G’raha had only heard twice before, typically seconds before Emet-Selch ungracefully excused himself from their conversations. The first time involved an idle comment about how the ecosystem adjusted to Lakeland’s perpetual summer; the second, an observation about imbuing magic into lamplights; and now, calling the moon _fine._ Consequentially, it was impossible to predict what triggered the mood swings.

As there would be no discovering where to search for the Ascian’s negotiation partner without more information, G’raha for the first time scrambled to pull the conversation back from the darker waters. 

“Not the moon, then. Where will you be instead?”

For a beat, Emet-Selch remained quiet. G’raha had an abrupt urge to leave his spot by the screen and stand in front of him. He buried the impulse; with the damned mask, it was impossible to glean anything extra from his facial expressions. 

When he spoke again, the dark tone had receded into something condescendingly contemplative. “Suddenly, you’re interested. I wonder what I did to deserve your attention.” 

That time, G’raha did not restrain his sigh. 

“Let us speak plainly, then.”

“I strive to, unlike another in this room.”

G’raha ignored that. “If you will not share your business to come, where _have_ you been?”

“The names here shift like sand across a desert.” An aloof observation, quite probably intended to get under G’raha’s skin. He strove to not allow it to needle. “How am I to keep track? I will say, all I found there were people in want for _more._ ”

Was that a hint?

Naturally, Eulmore came to mind. 

That would surely be too obvious.

“Greedy creatures they are,” the Ascian continued, his tone dipping again into disdain, “as they have always been. Given a choice, all they care for is themselves. Never mind the suffering they could avert if only they would look beyond their nose.”

G’raha frowned. He did not know who exactly Emet-Selch dealt with, but he guessed it was not another Ascian. 

One thing the accounts and adventuring journals had gotten right was an Ascian’s disgust with those not of its kind. That, too, was a trait Emet-Selch remained consistent with. Even as he persisted in bothering G’raha, he had said enough to make G’raha aware that he thought the Tower to be the source of G’raha’s worth. As the association was an expected layer to G’raha’s dealings with others, it was not too surprising; still, he did wish Emet-Selch recalled that he was not simply an extension of the Tower.

Not yet, anyway.

Tugging absently at his sleeve to better cover the crystal that stretched up his arm, G’raha said, “You speak as if you know that to be true of everyone.”

Emet-Selch tsked. “You speak as if you know it not to be.”

“I dare say I do.”

“You don’t. You are...” and here, Emet-Selch finally turned more fully toward him, twisting at the waist to -- most likely -- squint at him, “... Twenty-something? No, that can’t be right. We met years ago.”

G’raha’s ears, somehow, pressed flatter to his head. The arrogance!

“If it were true of everyone, the Crystarium would not have been built as peacefully as it was.” If it were true of everyone, he would not be in the First. The Eighth Umbral Calamity would have inspired only devastation and not the drive for prevention.

“Just wait until survival has been assured,” Emet-Selch sneered, “and the people realize they don’t have to listen to the boundaries of their neighbors. Wait until they forget the first years after the Flood, and remember only that someone _else_ caused it. You’ll see how peaceful they are then.”

G’raha’s tail lashed. He drew himself upright, frown deeper than before. This was not a discussion for today.

He said, too cold to be polite, “I believe you have somewhere else to be, Emet-Selch?”

For a moment, he didn’t think he would take it as the dismissal it was.

But then he stood, his dark robes a harsh cut in the Ocular’s gleaming space. “As it happens, I do. Try not to fall into a well and perish while I’m gone, Exarch.”

“If I do, I’ll make sure not to write anything for you to find.”

The Ascian smiled with the barest hint of teeth. “I would expect nothing less frustrating than that.”

Then he raised a hand in a lazy approximation of a good-bye, and summoned the dark aether to transport him away.

The crystal of his wrist itched, the Tower irritated with the warping of space-time within its halls. Slowly, G’raha unclenched the hand. In the heavy silence that descended after Emet-Selch’s departure, he thought: yes, it was time to do something with the Tower’s roof. A greenhouse, or garden, or pond. Something with life that required tending to mark the passing of days beyond black-and-white tallies in a journal.

**IV.**

G’raha indeed invested in a garden, although he quickly found the Tower’s aether turned anything planted atop its roof into a super-sized, glowing, possibly sentient mess. The sunflowers became narcissistic flowers which bloomed only when paid excessive attention, to include verbal compliments on the daily. Unfortunately, the newfound ego also meant their roots quietly strangled anything that had the audacity to be planted nearby. As a result, the garden became overrun with the neon-green petaled and blue seeded flowers, and G’raha subsequently found himself commissioning a greenhouse so as to protect the less aggressive plants from undue root-strangulation.

The greenhouse quickly became a free-for-all jungle that he had no hope of controlling. The cucumbers merged with the tomatoes, creating a hybrid so salty that only bartenders and ale-soaked patrons managed to find a use for. The basil came to resemble catnip, to his personal confusion and mild approval. Other plants grew snaking blue vines that did their damnedest to break the greenhouse’s glass, on the other side of which the jealous sunflowers just _waited_ for their chance. Most odd, his orange tree became an apple tree, and the apples themselves grew as large as his head. 

The citrusy aftertaste to the apples was pretty good if he did say so himself. He just wished he knew what had happened to make them so.

Needless to say: as he was overall an enthusiastic but clueless gardener, it was a boon that the plants largely regulated themselves.

Considering his experience with the garden, he was not sure why he thought he could handle raising a child.

Not that he had planned for Lyna, exactly. But after the battle which took her parents quieted, the Kholusia refugee caravan’s survivors continuing their journey to the Crystarium and the four-year-old viera-- well, _viis_ \-- unwilling to let go of his hand and startling at the approach of any figure not immediately recognizable… After they had at last arrived in the Crystarium, him in the wagon’s front seat and her asleep for the first time since the battle in his arms… Her drooling all over his shoulder and shedding grey fur across his black robes…

She had nowhere else to go, he told himself and his bemused cohorts. He’d take her in until a suitable family could be found. The Tower certainly had the space for her.

No one argued with him. That itself was a relief and a terror.

Seven months later, no alternative family presented itself. Lyna herself declared she wanted nothing to do with anyone else, as her grandfather, as she called him, was plenty!

He suspected she wanted to remain with him because he was _not_ the best at setting bed-times or restricting sweets intake. This, he vaguely knew he was supposed to be doing due both to the helpful advice of those with their own children whom he bought child-appropriate food and goods from, and also from the amazement in Lyna’s eyes when he didn’t take away the various tubs of pastries dropped off by concerned townsfolk until they were more than half-finished.

She proved, by all measures, an incredible child. She picked up writing and reading like a sponge in water. She collected odds and ends around the Crystarium and fashioned brilliant toys from them. She got along decently with the other children her age, though she was wont to abandon her friends and glue herself to his side if he left her eyesight too quickly. She ate all the vegetables he put in front of her, which he privately thought to be a miracle considering the recollection he had of himself at four years old and hiding broccoli under his chair when his parents weren’t looking. 

She suffered occasional bouts of uncontrolled temper or anguish. He’d worked out that avoiding such stark dips in mood involved heeding a strict routine, and not leaving her alone for more than an hour at a time. Considering his workload with managing the Crystarium and filling the practical gaps in the eventual goal to summon _her_ to the First (and with every gap he filled, five more holes appeared), he could not always keep to what Lyna needed. 

He simply hoped he was doing enough.

Truly, her pitfalls were amazingly few. She despised meat aside from plain, breaded chicken. She hated dairy. She demanded he stay in the room with her until she slept, and even then, often woke from nightmares-- to the point that they had taken to simply sharing a room, if only to save her a trip to his when she inevitably woke up. She had an incredible knack for finding her way into places she wasn’t supposed to be, which included the local smithery and armory. He had to confiscate more than one spearhead and pocket knife, and personally warn the smith and armory clerks to keep an eye out for her.

She was convinced she would grow up to be a hero and defend her home (and especially her favorite toys), and so wanted to _practice her fighting._ He discouraged such thoughts where he could, warning her of the danger; but, as she pointed out she just wanted to be like him, he found himself at a loss for words. 

She could get the strangest ideas. When he asked those at the market if that was typical of a child her age, he was assured it was not only typical, but bound to get much worse. 

He wasn’t sure he’d survive _much worse._

This time, they sat together at the makeshift dining table he set up in the Tower’s kitchen. Before her arrival, he had always taken his meals in his reading room, if not on the run as he was called to attend something-or-other in the town. Upon her arrival, she’d asked where his eating table was. When he’d said he didn’t have one, she’d made such a face of confusion that he’d immediately delved into the lower levels and dragged up an old foldable work table and its chairs left behind by Garlond Ironworks. 

The table had been very dusty and clashed terribly with the Tower’s glittering, crystal-walled kitchen, but the smile she’d given him had told him she didn’t mind in the least.

To make it less dusty, they had to use it consistently. To that end, and because she seemed to expect him to eat meals with her, they used it at least twice a day.

Right then was the second meal. A little later than usual due to the arrival of a disturbing demand from Eulmore by missive for _donations of recruits to protect the farming villages_ and the subsequent discussions he had with the Crystarium’s head of guards. The later hour disturbed their usual meal routine, which upset her more than anything else. It also put her in a hungry mood, which doubled as a cranky mood. When she found out he had fish on the dinner menu, her crankiness escalated.

“We can build a fort in your room after you’ve finished your fish,” he told her, hoping to have her finish the meal so he could get back to research before the twentieth bell of the day. 

“We could build a fort and I could eat the fish there,” she wheedled back, her eyes big and round as the sun.

That was another thing: the _bargaining._ Who knew child-rearing involved so much negotiating? He remembered his parents telling him to do a thing without any reward. The alternative was often punishment rather than payment.

And yet--!

“The dining table is where we eat,” he pointed out, very reasonably, “not our bedrooms.”

“We ate in my room before!”

“That was-- not dinner, that was a snack.”

“You said _eat_ ,” she crowed, sensing victory as he balked, “not _dinner._ ”

G’raha resisted the urge to put his head in his hands. Bargaining with her was more difficult than dealing with Eulmore’s new mayor. 

An itch crawled up his spine. He flicked his tail to dispel it. 

At month seven, he’d taken to more casual clothing around her. A tunic and leggings, or most frequently, a simple black robe and shorts. He’d sworn her to secrecy about his appearance, which she took very, very seriously. 

Based on what he heard her say to her toys when she thought he wasn’t around, it was quite possible she’d walked away with the impression that he was embarrassed about being a mystel. That, or she believed him a long-lost prince of a distant crystal kingdom in dire need of hiding his identity from an evil uncle. Neither option had been his intention, but he hadn’t worked out how to correct her without disturbing the importance with which she held the secret.

The itch returned, now a faint hum where crystal met skin. 

The crystal had grown halfway up his forearm while he’d been setting more permanent spells to protect the Crystarium. Another dash of blue had appeared on his left hip when he’d practiced the beginning stages of the fated summoning. It was-- worrying, to say the least.

It also functioned as an increasingly comprehensive gauge of the Tower’s status.

His head snapped up and toward the kitchen’s closed door just as he heard it: a knock.

Beside him, Lyna tensed so suddenly, he feared she would do herself harm. Her eyes and ears pinned on the door, her hand frozen around her unused spoon. Her pupils turned into pinpricks. 

First a later dinner, now a stranger. Panic was undoubtedly on her horizon.

“There you are. Well, hello.” An unfamiliar voice called, sounding annoyed. “I’ve knocked, as previously requested.”

_What._

It couldn’t be--

It wasn’t. The door swung open to reveal a young Garlean. His eyes first landed on G’raha, his expression pleasantly surprised even as G’raha was gaping in open confusion. Then he looked to Lyna, and his eyebrows climbed high, past his third eye and to his hairline.

The Garlean asked, as if he’d stumbled on something scandalous and wasn’t sure whether to be amused or disgusted: “What is _this?_ ”

Lyna’s eyes flitted to G’raha, silently begging for protection or explanation. 

No one came unplanned into their Tower.

G’raha found himself standing before he knew it, chair falling back and toppling over with a clatter. His staff was--? Ah, yes. His staff was in his reading room, but he had magics of his own. The crystal granted him power regardless of his conduit. If he wanted, he could repel this intruder from the Tower with a flick of his hand. Not that he had tried putting that particular move into practice before, but he had enough adrenaline in his system that he was willing to give it a go.

Lyna jumped at the sudden noise; G’raha wished he could spare her the glance to tell her it would be alright, but he did not dare take his eyes off the Garlean.

“Who are you?” 

_What_ was he would be the better question. As far as G’raha knew-- and he had existed now on the First for close to forty years and traversed as much of Novrandt as he physically could-- no Garleans survived the Flood. Where this one came from, and how he’d gotten into the Tower, were things G’raha would dearly like to know.

The Garlean squinted at him for a second. 

Then, understanding. He took a full step into the kitchen, turning to close the door again as if he’d been _invited._

He said, “Oh, of course. It has been a while for you, and this is a relatively new form for me. Do calm down, Exarch; it is only I, Emet-Selch. I meant to pay you only a social call. I will admit, I did not expect you to have company,” and, with a curious tilt to his head and appraising look in his golden eyes, “or to find you so underdressed.”

G’raha did not keep himself from a snarl. “ _Leave._ ”

The Garlean-- the _Ascian_ , returned again after twenty-odd years of silence-- raised his hands as if in surrender, but as always, did not heed G’raha’s request.

“Grandpa?”

G’raha looked to Lyna, caught off-guard by the fearful tremble in her voice. 

“ _Grandpa?_ ” Emet-Selch echoed, impossibly uncaring of how much he wasn’t wanted. “Absurd. I was not gone that long, and you still look not a day over twenty.”

Twenty-four, originally. And yet, he felt ever closer to his body’s true age.

“It’s fine,” he told Lyna, forcing himself to unclench his fists and give her a placating smile, “this is… a very rude acquaintance of mine. He startled me, is all. Now, him and I have matters to discuss. You should go to your room, Lyna.”

“I don’t want to,” she protested, quiet as a mouse and giving Emet-Selch another furtive glance.

She did not wish to leave him alone with a scary stranger. She really was an incredible child.

“You can eat your dinner there,” he said, hoping to distract her with her success in escaping having to eat fish. “I’ll be right up.”

At that, anger replaced fear. Her chin gained a stubborn jut. She turned and narrowed her eyes on Emet-Selch.

Emet-Selch, absolute seawolf he was, simply gazed back at her.

“Lyna, hm?” He said, abruptly placid. “Is that your fish?”

She acknowledged the question by glancing down at her plate, but did not move.

Emet-Selch said, “Tastes awful, doesn’t it?”

She blinked, face pinching in confusion.

“Like wet sawdust. Have you ever had sawdust?”

Slowly, barely noticeable, she shook her head.

“I wouldn’t recommend it. How about some broccoli cheddar soup instead of that nasty sea-dweller?” 

“What?” She whispered. Then, with a glance again to G’raha -- who watched the exchange play out in stunned silence -- and finding no protest there, she looked side-long at Emet-Selch. Loudly, as if that would make her feel better, she said, “I don’t know what that is. Sounds weird.”

“You’ll like it, I promise. Here, let me make you some.”

G’raha felt his temper spike as Emet-Selch walked to the stand-alone kitchen pantry. _How dare he_ invade their privacy. _How dare he--_

Lyna was still watching him, looking to him for a cue on how she should react to the interloper. G’raha struggled to get his temper under control, if only for her. His tail, he kept still; his ears, he unpinned; his face, he forced into neutrality. 

“I have nothing for that in there,” he stated blandly to Emet-Selch’s back.

“You should,” he was informed without the Ascian even looking his way. “She needs the calcium. Iron, too, though that will have to wait. She’s woefully lacking in both for a growing Viera.”

How did he know that, exactly? Had one of his prior new forms been a Viera? Was that even possible? As he’d shown up looking the part of a Garlean, it seemed so. But _looking like_ hardly meant the mortal restraints of _growing up as._

“What’s woefully mean?” Lyna asked G’raha.

“Ah,” he blinked, stalled out as his mind attempted to keep up with the surreal nature of the moment, “it means... “

“It means sad,” Emet-Selch said. “Like the state of your nutrition, sad.”

“I wasn’t asking you,” Lyna shot back instantly, hackles up, “I was asking grandpa.”

G’raha wasn’t sure if he should’ve corrected her manners, but he didn’t. 

Emet-Selch hummed a non-committal note. G’raha swore he heard a muttered, “Perhaps she is yours, Exarch.”

Then, although he had not left the pantry: the smell of melted cheese filled the room. Emet-Selch turned back to their table with a green bowl in his hands. He trudged to the table as though they had begrudged him, and set the bowl in front of a quiet Lyna. Within, a thick yellow and green-dotted soup steamed. 

“Try it,” he said, and then took a seat on a chair that had _not_ been at the table a second before. Under the soup’s tempting smell was a faint whiff of dark aether, standing at odds to the Tower’s steady magics.

Lyna’s eyes grew wide. They darted between the soup and the chair, her mouth open in shock. In the face of such peculiar magics, her fear and anger fled. In their place rose her greatest trait and G’raha’s greatest worry: curiosity.

“How’d you do that?”

“It’s a simple trick.” Emet-Selch put one elbow on the table and placed his chin in his hand, eyes lidded lazily and the left side of his mouth quirking up. “I’ll tell you after you try a bite.”

An incredulous bark of a laugh cut through the air.

Emet-Selch’s eyes slid his way. G’raha realized that had been _his_ laugh.

_Even Ascians had to bargain with children._

Or was it that even Ascians knew how to deal with children? It was an odd thought that he could not fully reconcile with the image of Emet-Selch. To give himself time to recoup, especially as said Ascian continued to watch him, he righted his chair and slowly took his seat.

By the time he’d sat (and wondered if he shouldn’t have taken the first bite to check the soup for either poison or a too-hot temperature), Lyna had tentatively taken a spoonful of the soup and given it a cautious lick. After a moment of contemplation, she took a real bite. Then another. And another.

“Grandpa, you should make this instead of the gross fish,” she informed him, brightening with food and the distraction. “Can we have this tomorrow too?”

Emet-Selch spread his hands in front of him as if to say, _See? I’m perfectly harmless. I’m also a better cook than you, even though I definitely cheat._

G’raha’s tail flicked in annoyance.

“Maybe,” he told Lyna, trying again to keep his irritation out of his voice and mostly succeeding. At least that was a familiar emotion when it came to Emet-Selch. “You’ll have to finish it, first.”

She gave a soup-garbled noise of affirmation and truly dug in. Mouth yet full, she looked to Emet-Selch and asked, “Hah’d mach heh chour?”

Emet-Selch stared at her. Then looked to G’raha.

“How’d you make the chair?” G’raha obligingly translated.

“Magic,” he told Lyna, and then wiggled his fingers at her. The motion was at extreme odds with his bored expression. “Specifically, creation magic.”

“Swallow first,” G’raha told her as she opened her still-full mouth.

Thankfully, she did. “What’s creation magic?”

That _was_ a good question.

“Imagine all types of magic. White, black, red; fire, ice, ground, wind. Now, imagine the magics didn’t have to be cast separately. Imagine all magic working together simultaneously to make whatever you needed. That is... a rudimentary explanation for what creation magic entails.”

Lyna’s eyes were again large with curiosity. It was clear to G’raha she understood none of what she heard, but that her imagination was quite captured by its ideas. 

“Whoa.”

The corners of Emet-Selch’s mouth drew tight in an emotion G’raha couldn’t discern. After a moment, he simply nodded, and turned his attention to G’raha.

“Can you do it again to make a--” Lyna started, miffed at being turned away from. 

“Lyna,” G’raha interrupted, tone stern, “questions can wait until after dinner. Keep eating.”

She made to protest, but a pointed look thankfully shut her down. The pull of good soup too much to resist, she ate as she was bid to. She also, G’raha noticed with no small amusement, stared openly at Emet-Selch.

Emet-Selch, for his part, stared unflinchingly at G’raha.

“So your business was in Garlemald,” G’raha said in as idle a tone as he could manage. Now that the shock had started to wear off, something about Emet-Selch’s face reminded him of someone. He’d called his body a _new form_ , which G’raha could only begin to fathom the meaning of. He’d grown used to thinking of his Ascian visitor as an old, withered man filled with spiteful dislike of the world around him; seeing a fresh, young face but hearing the same cadence of flippant disinterest was jarring. “It’s been… a while.”

“I told you that it would be.”

“And what prompted this visit?”

“A check-in,” Emet-Selch said, “to see if the Tower yet consumed you.”

His ears flicked back, his tail tip twitching. Shifting his arms under the table, G’raha tapped a crystal finger on his knee. 

He avoided looking at Lyna. There would be a great many questions after Emet-Selch’s inevitably sudden departure, and he was already exhausted by them.

“As you can see, I’m whole and hale,” he said, voice cool.

“I see now a partial explanation for how, heir of Allag.”

“Allag?” Lyna asked, perhaps thinking of her imagined crystal kingdom for him. 

G’raha hoped so, anyway. 

He frowned. “Did you not already know that?”

Emet-Selch shrugged one shoulder. “I suspected. But it does not explain how you’ve done all you have.”

“Must we walk the same path again and again every time we meet, Asc--” 

He stopped himself. No. Lyna did not need that word in her growing vocabulary, lest it invite trouble.

Across the table, Emet-Selch raised one eyebrow at his stumble.

“... Emet-Selch?” G’raha finished, lamely.

The eyebrow lowered. Again, he shrugged one shoulder. “I’d rather not, although I fear it is a tedious inevitability. Go on, ask me what you would.”

It was then G’raha realized he had a dozen questions.

How else would he describe creation magic? How was it learned? How could it be taught? Why were Ascians, harbingers of destruction, gifted with such an incredible thing as creation magic?

What had he been doing in Garlemald? What was happening on the Source, if that was the Garlemald he even visited? _By the Twelve_ , if he’d come from the Source-- pure longing hit G’raha like a sledgehammer to the chest. He choked on it, his lungs too tight and his desperation to hear _anything_ of his home too sudden. The last he had seen it, it had been nothing but rubble and waste. What was it like now? He knew _she_ had yet to be born, but what of Sharlayan? Was Rammbroes yet born, yet studying, yet investigating? What of the Students of Baldesion? No, but the Seventh Calamity had not yet occurred-- or had it? Had their bid to halt the Eighth shifted the Seventh? It shouldn’t have, but their calculations were all so theoretical, there was no truly telling their ripple effect.

These and more were questions that kept him awake. Questions he could ask no one but himself, for they contained secrets for no one but himself.

But no, _no_ , he couldn’t know. He couldn’t ask. Questions were too telling, no matter how scant or vague. It would give Emet-Selch a place, a time, a person to connect to the Crystal Exarch, and secrecy was G’raha’s best and only weapon against this foe.

… Curious.

When had he stopped thinking of Emet-Selch as a threat to himself?

“Can you make me more soup?” Lyna asked, breaking G’raha from his spiraling thoughts.

Emet-Selch finally looked again to Lyna. If G’raha didn’t know better (but, did he know better?), he’d swear the Ascian had forgotten her. 

“ _Can_ I? Yes.”

Lyna grinned, holding up her emptied bowl. When Emet-Selch did not move and she processed his haughty tone, her nose scrunched in displeasure and she corrected herself, “ _May_ you _please_ make more soup?”

Emet-Selch waved a dismissive hand, and the bowl filled again.

Watching it happen, G’raha saw the swirl of white before the soup appeared. Outside of the Tower’s overwhelming presence, he was sure it would carry a stronger scent of magic.

Lyna squeaked in delight-- a noise that typically embarrassed her, but G’raha delighted in-- and again ducked to shovel it in.

G’raha watched her then, needing the distraction of his affection for her from his burning questions about his home.

That, and Emet-Selch had returned to staring at him.

“Is there something on my face?” G’raha finally asked, not as kindly as he had intended but not entirely caring.

“Yes,” Emet-Selch returned, gesturing as his own eyes in reference to G’raha’s, making G’raha hunch his shoulders slightly in reflexive discomfort at the reminder he had not had in decades, “but, moreover, I’m still waiting.”

He could ask Emet-Selch to leave, he realized then. He would likely listen.

But this was… an opportunity.

Even if he could not ask about the Source or the Ascian’s scheming, there seemed to be other topics he would open up about. G’raha need only swallow his wariness.

After a beat, he found his voice and his intellectual curiosity. He met Emet-Selch’s eyes and asked, “Tell me more about your creation magic.”

Although his expression did not change overly, he had the distinct feeling Emet-Selch was pleased.

The Ascian stayed well past the twentieth bell. 

In that time, G’raha filled gaps that his academic kin would have killed for. Lyna left to entertain herself in her room when she realized they would not be dissuaded from their _boring talks_. G’raha learned of creation magic, of complex aetherology from ancient masters, of Sundering and Shards. Of Zodiark and Hydaelyn -- the primals to begin all primals-- and the Ascians’ collective tempering by one over the other.

Of a future Rejoining, although Emet-Selch neatly evaded the peculiarities of what that entailed. It would not be until G’raha took the time to record and reflect on their conversations that he gleaned the edges of the Rejoining, and found the makings of a final Calamity.

He wished he could say he was surprised or disheartened, but Emet-Selch had never hidden what he was. 

Before then, the conversation itself, the so-called social visit, was not the worst time he’d spent.

From then on, Emet-Selch reappeared at least once a year. Never for as long as that first long discussion, and never again in Lyna’s presence, much to G’raha’s relief.

They settled into a comfortable game of conversational cat-and-mouse that, somehow, always managed to pick up just where they left it. Eventually, G’raha forgot to dread the Ascian’s appearances and whatever new rhetorical debate he brought with him. Indeed, he looked forward to it. He didn’t realize how much until he caught himself researching the Ronkan Empire’s guardian systems to better support his stance that creation magic was nothing more than a sped-up version of what all magic-inclined beings had the potential for.

It was, he supposed, one of the few consistencies across his unexpectedly long, stretched-out life.

“Grandfather,” Lyna said to him on that day of realization, grown taller than him and yet still so small in his eyes, “must you travel to Rak’tika? Since when have you been interested in the Ronkan Empire, anyway?”

“It will only be for a day’s excursion,” he said, avoiding her skeptical eyes by fiddling with his drawn-up hood. 

“I should hope so,” she said, as if he were the young one, “I do worry about your longer trips.”

He had not taken a longer trip from the Tower in months. Collapsing in Mord Souq in front of the Crystarium’s long-standing trading partners had been more than embarrassing. It’d woken him to the ever-growing stretch of crystal up his arm and across his hip, although he buried his dread under his knowledge that it wouldn’t be too long before he completed his final work. He’d hoped to go on one last adventure beyond the Tower’s shadow with _her_ , but it looked less and less likely.

At least he could serve his purpose well from within the Tower.

And he would serve his purpose, for all his distrust of Emet-Selch had mellowed, he had not forgotten the suffering to follow a Calamity. If he felt himself too caught up with his dalliance, he simply looked out on the Crystarium and reminded himself: without a second’s pause, Emet-Selch would have it and the entire First destroyed. 

It became a routine self-reminder, as he found himself needing it more often. Especially after a visit.

“Grandfather?”

G’raha shook his head, returning his thoughts to the present. He said, hoping he guessed right on the response she wanted, “That sounds fine, thank you.”

“I asked if you packed your mud boots.” 

“Oh. Er,” he cleared his throat, “yes. I did.”

Her skepticism at his fitness to travel increased, but at least she did not threaten to lock him in the Tower. 

(She found him mere seconds before he teleported to Slitherborough, shoving his mud boots into his arms with fond exasperation. They had been in the greenhouse, apparently, and did he know that the sunflowers had invaded the basil-patch through a crack in the back paneling? 

\-- He did now, he said, and he hoped the rooftop was not entirely sunflowers upon his return.)

That no one else spoke of his distraction with a figure that appeared and disappeared at will was more a testament to Emet-Selch’s uncanny ability to avoid detection than anything G’raha did.

Once upon a time, he recalled that fact worrying him. It was good not to worry such a small thing, he thought, when the biggest event loomed ever closer (but never _close enough_ ).

**V.**

“The crystal’s spreading, isn’t it.”

“Hello, Emet-Selch. Would you like to take a seat and join me for tea?”

The Ascian, his Garlean form now old and hunched, eyed the Exarch with open disdain. The overgrown beard and uncombed hair turned his glower into an amusing sight.

That G’raha recognized now -- and had, for the past decade or so -- the form to match one Emperor Solus zos Galvus was an unfortunate thing that struck G’raha at the oddest times. To maintain some level of civility with his visitor, he focused foremost on his relief that the Emperor aged in time with his calculations of what temporal discrepancies existed between the Source and First. It involved a complicated equation proposed by Cid and Nero that he, frankly, was not a skilled enough mathematician to understand or change, so it was good it held up. 

As he found himself surprised when summers passed and festivals arrived sooner than later. As calendar dates increased impossibly higher; well, the visual reminder was appreciated.

What _that_ particular Emperor had done and would do-- the suffering he would cause, the expansionist wars and mindless deaths and bigoted nationalistic fervor; what terrors and horrors his minions would accomplish even generations later, _everything else,_ up to and including the Black Rose to spark the Eighth Calamity--

Well.

It was not the largest surprise an Ascian was behind it. For a time, G’raha had found himself disappointed that the Ascian was Emet-Selch, but he maintained enough self-awareness to recognize that he thought so only because he knew Emet-Selch as an eccentric visitor and occasional debate partner. 

Soon, that perception would change. This Emet-Selch did not yet know the Warrior of Light. For all G’raha felt himself losing touch with the worlds around him, he had yet to lose his faith in her. He would allow nothing to disturb it. He could not afford to.

But until they stood on opposite sides of the battle field, they could have some tea.

When Emet-Selch did not budge from his place in the doorway and instead made ready to begin his complaints anew, G’raha motioned again toward the seat opposite him. He sat at an ornate, granite-topped table with four adjacent and equally nice, wooden chairs. The tabletop was covered in papers and schematics, with the sole exceptions of an inkwell and its quill, a steaming mug of chamomile tea, and a small plate with a half-eaten sandwich. 

Even covered in papers, the table was nicer than a repurposed fold-out. It had been a gift from one of Lyna’s misguided and ultimately failed suitors who had happened to be a carpenter-- one G’raha had resisted moving into his kitchen, but which Lyna had put her foot down over when she discovered his meal times were anything except routine and she took it upon herself to, when she had the time, sit down with him for dinner like olden times.

After another second’s deliberation, Emet-Selch sat. He flicked his fingers and floated over the kettle from the stovetop as well as a mug from the kitchen counter’s rack, as G’raha figured he would. Then, the pouring of hot water.

“I’m glad to see that you still deign to pour your own tea,” G’raha murmured into his cup. “You wouldn’t want your body wasting away too soon from inaction.”

He did not need to look up from his papers to see Emet-Selch’s exasperation. “Jealousy does not suit you, Exarch.” He heard the gentle clink of the kettle returning to the stovetop. 

“Jealousy?” G’raha did look up then, if only to pointedly eye Emet-Selch’s snow-white beard. “I see not much to be jealous of, Ascian.”

A scoff. It was, G’raha knew, a touch amused. 

“Come off it. I spy far more than stray white in your hair.” Then, with his nose more in the air, his eyes cutting even as he sounded more aloof, “And more than a splash of blue at your collar. What will you do once the crystal has reached your brain? Has it yet grown harder to breathe?”

The next sip of his tea, G’raha found, lasted much longer than the first. He needed a moment to convince himself not to throw it in Emet-Selch’s face.

Emet-Selch gave him the time to consider, his expression too blank for G’raha to read.

Finally, G’raha lowered his cup to the table. “I have no issue moving my limbs. I can’t imagine my lungs will fare any different.”

Wouldn’t the Ascian know? Throughout their discussions-- when he’d finally put the familiarity to a name of Emet-Selch’s Garlean form-- it came to light Emet-Selch had more than a hand in the Allagan Empire’s rise and, by extension, the Syrcus Tower’s makings. But then, he had marveled at G’raha’s attunement with it often enough for G’raha to understand that what Garlond Ironworks and he had accomplished, was in fact as novel as it had felt.

How lucky for him.

… The silence had gone on too long.

G’raha frowned at his visitor. Emet-Selch had a contemplative look in his eye, which never boded well. 

When he caught G’raha’s frown, Emet-Selch spoke without further prompting:

“I could try to halt it, you know.”

G’raha felt himself tense. “Excuse me?”

“I harbor no illusions that you understand what is happening to you any better than I do,” _true_ , but he didn’t have to say it, “and of what I see, it is likely the Tower is attempting to heal you. In doing so, it is rewriting you with itself.”

G’raha’s frown deepened.

“When you use its abilities, you channel its power. Unfortunately, your mortal body was never meant to possess such arcane energies, let alone act as a repeat conduit for them.”

“I rarely feel pain or discomfort,” G’raha said, if only to keep his own foothold in the conversation. It was mostly true: he felt more aching, all-consuming exhaustion than anything like a cut, blow or bruise. If he felt pain, it was merely where crystal met skin, and only then when he ventured too far from the Tower or when he used too much magic at once.

Emet-Selch waved a dismissive hand, shaking his head. “Of course not. Your senseless mind cannot possibly comprehend what is happening to your body. I imagine the pain is manifesting in other ways. Perpetual exhaustion, an inability to keep concentration, loss of time, loss of hair or its color--”

“Are you sure you’re describing me?”

“-- which will all increase until the Tower has healed you completely.”

G’raha tamped down on his spike of nervousness. “That doesn’t sound like healing.”

“To the Tower, it is. To maximize its efficiency, your inadequate self must be improved.” Emet-Selch spread his hands, palms up and open, and gave him a shrug. As if G’raha were a sick amaro with a broken wing, and Emet-Selch the doctor declaring him a lost cause. “And so it turns you into what it knows will work: aether crystal.”

“How could you possibly help halt that?” 

A light frown drew down Emet-Selch’s face. “I am simply telling you what I’ve observed, Exarch. Do not take what I say personally.”

G’raha felt his knee bounce under the table, his nervousness building, and stopped it.

“It’s difficult not to, since you’re discussing _me_ ,” he said, his temper in check. Barely. “And insisting on adding insults to the mix.”

“They are not insults, they are statements of fact.” An old argument, a now-ancient annoyance. As there would be no shifting Emet-Selch’s opinion on what he deemed _lesser creatures_ and G’raha would never find a stomach to hear it, they moved forward without resolution. “I could fashion a… circuit breaker, of sorts. Something to interrupt your connection with the Tower when its power begins to overwhelm your body, that you could then reset when it was safe to do so. Then, for the day-to-day, something to regulate the aether flow between you and it. You would retain your stasis and thus your functional immortality, as well as boast magics well beyond any so-called mage on this dismal Shard, but you’ll cease to lose yourself to its pull.”

“No.”

“No?” There had been no hesitation in G’raha’s voice. A spark of surprise lit in Emet-Selch’s eye as he considered him and his conviction. “It would save your skin, literally. Possibly your very self. There is no telling what the Tower will identify as hazardous to your safety once it reaches the piece of you that links mind, body and soul.”

“What you propose is interference.”

“Without interference, you are doomed to become one with this structure.”

G’raha turned his attention back to his tea. It had grown disappointingly lukewarm.

“Exarch,” Emet-Selch said, no longer aloof, “you will be entirely overtaken within half a millenium,” and was that alarm in his voice?

If it was, it was too faint to matter. 

G’raha found himself pricked with idle curiosity. The rest of him had gone curiously numb. “If I proceed to use my powers as I have, you mean?”

“By my estimations. Yes.”

The energy it would take to summon the Warrior of Light to the First had been calculated as tenfold what G’raha had identified as his _threshold amount for the day_ before he collapsed and woke hours later to crystal eating its way up his skin and the burning need for a week’s nap. He wondered what that would do to Emet-Selch’s handy estimations.

Half a millennium was far more than he needed, anyway. He needed only until she slayed the last Lightwarden.

It could not come soon enough.

He hoped when the time did come, Lyna would understand.

“A life that long, and I’d need a beard as impressive as yours,” he finally said, gaze steady on his unanticipated companion. “Unfortunately, I fear miqo’te aren’t much for growing them. They’re very sparse and very itchy. It looks like we glued kobold-hairs to our chins.”

Emet-Selch was silent for a good, long moment.

Then he sat back with a small _tsk_ , his eyes closing and a hand settling on his hip. The other he raised. 

A snap of his fingers, and G’raha felt his tea warm to the perfect sipping temperature.

He tipped his head forward in thanks, the tension easing from his shoulders as he worked at finishing the rest of it.

“Stubborn creatures,” Emet-Selch muttered in a tone too light to be derisive. Dare he call it fond?

No, definitely not. If it was, it was far, far too faint to matter.

**V + I.**

“Emet-Selch.”

“Elidibus. I thought you might be around soon. Where has your trust in my abilities gone? I remember when you would leave me to my own devices and concoctions for centuries at a stretch. It was a more peaceful time, then.”

“The Emperor was due his death a week prior. What has stalled you?”

The ailing corpse-to-be hardly wished to move. Emet-Selch had long sectioned his mind and soul from the body, but he had been forced to remain in the vessel in case an attendant or general or particularly keen chocobo approached him and bid him wakefulness. He had toyed with the idea of placing the body in stasis and evacuating for a vacation anyway, but that was too far a dereliction of duties even for him. The disarray to follow his body’s death was to be a highlight of his time as Solus zos Galvus. Allowing a worm to hold an imaginary discussion with his sleeping form and thereafter concoct a story of him pronouncing a legitimate heir to the Empire was a set-back of tedious proportions. 

To Elidibus, the white-robed form standing at the end of the Emperor’s to-be death bed, Emet-Selch revitalized the organs necessary for speech in order to mutter, “What matters a mere week’s delay?” 

“Lahabrea has confronted Hydalyn’s newest chosen in the field and found her stronger than expected. The people will find a suitable leader in her.”

“The gathering of sheep is not a problem for the wolf. One may even call it a preference.” 

Elidibus fed his impatience directly into Emet-Selch’s awareness. _Move_ , the push against his soul demanded. A heavy, crushing weight set upon his chest and threatened to strain his heart into stopping.

As if they hadn’t already worked through an eternity! Emet-Selch bristled, tilting his head off the bed’s plush pillows to glare at his bothersome fellow. He gave Elidibus’ soul a rough push back, snapping a mawful of toothy aether to regain space. 

Elidibus held steady against his frustration and let him smash uselessly into a wall of indifference. 

In an olden body made of messy flesh and unrefined elements, Emet-Selch stood at the disadvantage. His fight drained out of him. 

There was no budging Elidibus when he got in such a single-minded mood, anyway.

“ _Fine_ , you tiresome lout.” Emet-Selch dropped his head back to the pillow and let himself feel the ache in his bones, the need in him to _sleep and finally, at last, find rest,_ indulging himself for a moment to believe it to be true. “This body will die by the morrow.”

After a half-second wherein he prodded at Emet-Selch’s soul to confirm his intent, Elidibus at last eased off. Emet-Selch mentally grumbled through the entire process, his pride irked at having his boundaries so abruptly invaded.

“What has put you in so foul a mood?” He asked once Elidibus’ silent pressure fully withdrew.

He was paid the respect of not being fed some answer like _the delay._ After eons, they knew there was no true timeline to the Rejoining. Urgency had perished after Hydalyn had torn their God asunder.

Instead, Elidibus said, “Your dalliance in the First. I would know its purpose, but I fear you do not know the true shape of it, either.”

“I know well enough.”

“Then tell me.”

“The Light will consume it within a decade’s time, and the First will Rejoin the Source as it was meant to.”

“That is as Mitron and Loghrif said before they perished.”

“You dare compare my expertise to Mitron’s and Loghrif’s? They were merely children when they arrived on the First. And as one must with children, I am cleaning up after them.”

Silence.

In it, Emet-Selch narrowed his eyes at the canopy above his bed. 

“Or, dear Elidibus,” and here he pitched his voice as smooth and kind as it would go, “do you think me straying? Do you think me attached to such a pitiful fragment of our home?”

“I can’t help but recall what monument you built in the, what is it called now? The Tempest.”

“I would certainly hope so. I gave you the complete tour. You appreciated seeing your office most of all, for reasons I yet struggle to comprehend.”

“Yes, I appreciated it. Before you added the shades of our people.”

 _Pah._

“Shades are all they are.” He closed his eyes, and found they ached. His chest, too, and its woeful heart, undoubtedly greyed. Everything ached. “A reminder of what we lost and what we stand to regain.”

“And the final days? Need that have been placed beyond the Convocation’s gates and set on tireless repeat?”

“A reminder,” he said again, shifting uselessly to find a more comfortable position for his death. His body’s death. The Emperor’s death, rather.

“Are we in danger of forgetting?”

_Never._

Emet-Selch murmured, words a sigh, “Are you finished, Elidibus? I wish to rest my eyes before I lose all feeling in them.”

Elidibus had evidently exhausted his paranoia, as he finally backed off. “Very well. I will see you again once the First has Rejoined us.” And, with his unasked-for supervisory duties complete, he removed himself from Emet-Selch’s presence. 

As he did every time they separated, he searched himself for the thread that bound them across worlds. Elidibus had returned to his haunt on the moon, as expected. Communing as directly as possible with Zodiark, no doubt. 

Lahabrea appeared to be in the vicinity of Ishgard. Why was that, again? He vaguely recalled him mentioning a religious zealot at their last meeting. Surely that business had been concluded.

Perhaps he was nostalgic for his own phantasmal dragon creations. Or he liked the cold. 

Definitely had to be the dragons.

Zodiark brushed a comforting warmth against his searching soul. In it, He promised to restore more than two meager threads to his awareness.

Emet-Selch turned his soul away from the promise, finding it more a burn than a balm at that exact moment.

A week’s delay in the Emperor’s death.

How peculiar time moved between the Source and its Shards. 

He had known when he received the call that he shouldn’t have followed it, lest a delay occur. But for the first time, the curious miqo’te had reached his supplemented aether into the Source. Clearly, he’d been searching for someone, though how or why Emet-Selch hadn’t immediately discerned. A bit of him knew he should’ve inquired further, but he was… curious. Very few things surprised him these days. When he looked into something, when he truly pushed, the surprises tended to be even less.

Lucky the Exarch was that he stumbled first into Emet-Selch’s path rather than Elidibus’ or Lahabrea’s. They would have had no context for Syrcus Tower’s expanded powers, or that it came with one strange heir to Allag.

 _Emet-Selch?_ the Exarch had called-- yelled, most likely, though it sounded scantly stronger than a whisper into a malfunctioning linkpearl. _Where are you now?_

 _Where I usually have been for the past few decades,_ he’d replied, shocked and curious. The Exarch continued to surprise. Interested to see how the Exarch could manage the connection without help, he kept his aether to himself, stabilizing it only when it threatened to drop entirely (and it did threaten, quite unfortunately often).

 _Garlemald!_ Obviously so, but the Exarch spoke more with absolute jubilation than awareness. _In the Source, then?_

Obviously!

 _What are you doing, little Exarch?_ Getting in over his head with the Tower’s powers, undoubtedly. Foolish miqo’te. He seemed determined to run himself into the ground.

Again, the connection faltered. Emet-Selch grabbed it with two aetherial hands, forcing it steady.

 _What did you just do? Everything got clearer._ The Exarch asked, rudely ignoring his question. Now the connection was more a functioning linkpearl than a broken one, although still nothing compared to a proper video phone or true soul-to-soul link. 

_Nothing difficult,_ he replied, honest.

The Exarch immediately requested, _Teach me, then._

Frustration bubbled up abrupt and all-consuming. If they had a true link, it would be a simple matter of transferring a memory of the technique. Ensuing questions could be answered without delay or strain. If one of them struggled in describing a problem, they could turn the other’s mind directly to the point of annoyance.

This limited connection was--- wasteful. Inefficient.

Infuriating.

 _One moment,_ he told the Exarch over his flimsy call, and summoned himself a portal to the First. 

He registered the Exarch telling him to stay where he was, but that just wouldn’t do. He had nothing of importance to do but die, anyway. An hour or two to explain how to secure an aetherial tether to a targeted soul would be no problem.

As it turned out, the Exarch already had the knowledge and equipment to do what he intended, which explained how he’d had any success at all. He’d simply not fed it the right dosage of power in the right sequence, and had used a portal screen that was for regional links rather than interdimensional. The one in the Ocular was much better suited.

By the end of the fourth hour, Emet-Selch had recalled he had an Emperor to topple-- and, more relevantly, the Exarch had shifted into a maudlin mood that was at extreme odds with his original curiosity-fueled enthusiasm. Emet-Selch thus provided him a device for translating the technical Allagan he found in the standard digitized manuals that had until-then been incomprehensible to the miqo’te, and bid him farewell until the next time.

Typically after a visit to the Exarch, he would rest for a spell within Amaurot’s peaceful halls. 

But he was self-aware enough to know that he occasionally wandered Amaurot longer than intended, his mind lost to its memories, and he had a death of yet another life to complete.

A quick check on the temporal displacements between the Source and First alerted him to the fact that time was moving quite rapidly indeed on one side only. _Next time,_ then. There would be a next time. The First was close to succumbing to its natural pull back to the Source, but not that close.

It was only once he’d returned to the Emperor’s room that he took a moment to reflect that had been the first time the Exarch had been able to and succeeded in seeking _him_ out. Perhaps with an increased understanding of the portal screens, their exchanges would increase in frequency.

It would only be a matter of time until the Exarch shared whatever it was that drove him to such lengths. If he intended to halt the First’s demise like a hero -- and through their conversations, Emet-Selch was all but positive that captured the essence of Exarch’s end-goal -- then it would, at least, be a new spin on what had become an otherwise monotonous hero-thwarting process. Ideally, the Exarch would return to the Crystal Tower in the Source and, after the Eighth Calamity, be persuaded to share his inter-dimensional replication process with those who could put it to better use. 

There would be hurt feelings, probably. Stubbornness and resistance, definitely. Direct cajoling to finally bring to heel his surprising affinity with the Tower under a steady and stable hand, absolutely.

The Exarch had proven himself more resilient than the average mortal, but he was also an undeniably gentle soul. 

As time went on and his options narrowed, he would be persuaded to see reason. 

The First Rejoined and the Syrcus Tower at its fullest potential under Ascian guidance. Unbidden, warmth swept through his soul: Zodiark’s approval and encouragement, a balm and never a burn.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading!
> 
> Join me on [twitter](https://twitter.com/peltyfluff) if you like. :)


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